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I am completely, 100% on board with what these people are doing and hope they find much joy. What gives me pause is the certainty that these stylings will not

I am completely, 100% on board with what these people are doing and hope they find much joy. What gives me pause is the certainty that these stylings will not scale. Once the populatione exceeds Dunbar's Number[1], a management layer must needs precipitate, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy[2] will kick in. Inevitably. The notion that cool ideas like this can apply to large, non-self-selecting populations is a bugaboo. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

grecy 5y ago
> What gives me pause is the certainty that these stylings will not scale Why does that matter? That's like saying my backyard vegetable garden will not scale to feed the entire street, or that the new M1 MacBook Pro won't scale to train the Tesla AI. Just because something doesn't scale it doesn't mean it isn't a great thing worthy of perusing & learning from.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Yes, my take was a little more toward, you don't scale it, you rather replicate lots and lots of small villages. Having just typed that though, I agree with OP that even lots and lots of these could not replace a dense urban city. You know, unless some plague wiped out 90% of our population.
  - smitty1e 5y ago
    I'm more worried about the visionary that wants to set themselves over a fee dozen such challenges and then start bossing everone around. For the "common good". You understand. These sad tales always stem from the best intentions.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  Hence my leadoff: > I am completely, 100% on board with what these people are doing and hope they find much joy. Looks like a wonderful place. But such contexts (thinking the Amish here) are sustained by the kind of cohesion that will be challenging to generalize. But watch some idealist try.
refurb 5y ago
How many business partnerships fall apart due to interpersonal differences? Families? I don’t think you even need to hit the Dunbar number for it to fail.
bla3 5y ago
From [2]: > According to a 2005 study, "Despite almost a century of scholarly debate on this question... there is still no consensus about whether and under what conditions Michels’s claim holds true"
- smitty1e 5y ago
  OK, but Dunbar's Number is likely some flavor of upper limit.
southerntofu 5y ago
> Dunbar's Number It's ok. You don't have to scale. Just have lots and lots of smaller communes and federate. If email and ActivityPub can work like that, why not AFK communities? > Iron Law of Oligarchy Now that's really not a scientific concept. Just because something does not appear to exist doesn't mean it's not possible. I personally strongly disagree that any form of organization is tyranny: depending on the modes of organizing, it can be pretty liberatory in giving a common framework for empowering me to act in ways i could never if i were alone and isolated. Building collective power is not necessarily to the detriment of individual power, though i'm not suggesting that finding a balance is always easy.
- throwamon 5y ago
  > Just have lots and lots of smaller communes and federate As long as humans are humans, good luck. If even a tiny percentage of these have even slightly above average narcissism / sociopathic tendencies / charisma, we'll be seeing social dynamics play out that end up in winner-take-all situations and tensions, communes merging into larger structures based on ideology, etc.
- mcculley 5y ago
  I am interested in how well even smaller communes have scaled through time and not necessarily through space and population size. One force that works against communism is the tendency of people to favor their progeny when allocating resources. Is there good documentation or history on communes that survive through multiple generations?
- smitty1e 5y ago
  > strongly disagree that any form of organization is tyranny Not to get hung up on your quantifier, or the idea of organization as such, the issue is the feedback loops that keep the organizational structure in acceptable trim. The overwhelming majority of bureaucracies tend toward a Tower of Babel situation over time.
dkersten 5y ago
They do have three neighborhoods of ~30 houses, each with their own governance. They scale it by adding additional neighborhoods, not by increasing the sizes of the existing neighborhoods.

grecy 5y ago

> What gives me pause is the certainty that these stylings will not scale Why does that matter? That's like saying my backyard vegetable garden will not scale to feed the entire street, or that the new M1 MacBook Pro won't scale to train the Tesla AI. Just because something doesn't scale it doesn't mean it isn't a great thing worthy of perusing & learning from.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Yes, my take was a little more toward, you don't scale it, you rather replicate lots and lots of small villages. Having just typed that though, I agree with OP that even lots and lots of these could not replace a dense urban city. You know, unless some plague wiped out 90% of our population.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  I'm more worried about the visionary that wants to set themselves over a fee dozen such challenges and then start bossing everone around. For the "common good". You understand. These sad tales always stem from the best intentions.
smitty1e 5y ago
Hence my leadoff: > I am completely, 100% on board with what these people are doing and hope they find much joy. Looks like a wonderful place. But such contexts (thinking the Amish here) are sustained by the kind of cohesion that will be challenging to generalize. But watch some idealist try.

refurb 5y ago

How many business partnerships fall apart due to interpersonal differences? Families? I don’t think you even need to hit the Dunbar number for it to fail.

bla3 5y ago

From [2]: > According to a 2005 study, "Despite almost a century of scholarly debate on this question... there is still no consensus about whether and under what conditions Michels’s claim holds true"

smitty1e 5y ago
OK, but Dunbar's Number is likely some flavor of upper limit.

southerntofu 5y ago

> Dunbar's Number It's ok. You don't have to scale. Just have lots and lots of smaller communes and federate. If email and ActivityPub can work like that, why not AFK communities? > Iron Law of Oligarchy Now that's really not a scientific concept. Just because something does not appear to exist doesn't mean it's not possible. I personally strongly disagree that any form of organization is tyranny: depending on the modes of organizing, it can be pretty liberatory in giving a common framework for empowering me to act in ways i could never if i were alone and isolated. Building collective power is not necessarily to the detriment of individual power, though i'm not suggesting that finding a balance is always easy.

throwamon 5y ago
> Just have lots and lots of smaller communes and federate As long as humans are humans, good luck. If even a tiny percentage of these have even slightly above average narcissism / sociopathic tendencies / charisma, we'll be seeing social dynamics play out that end up in winner-take-all situations and tensions, communes merging into larger structures based on ideology, etc.
mcculley 5y ago
I am interested in how well even smaller communes have scaled through time and not necessarily through space and population size. One force that works against communism is the tendency of people to favor their progeny when allocating resources. Is there good documentation or history on communes that survive through multiple generations?
smitty1e 5y ago
> strongly disagree that any form of organization is tyranny Not to get hung up on your quantifier, or the idea of organization as such, the issue is the feedback loops that keep the organizational structure in acceptable trim. The overwhelming majority of bureaucracies tend toward a Tower of Babel situation over time.

dkersten 5y ago

They do have three neighborhoods of ~30 houses, each with their own governance. They scale it by adding additional neighborhoods, not by increasing the sizes of the existing neighborhoods.